Just buy stardock, already. Cheaper than getting your code monkeys to write compileable code ...
Ready, get Sets... no? App-grouping whizzery for Windows 10 killed
Microsoft dropped another Insider build of Windows 10 last night. Hidden away among the long list of tweaks in build 17704 was news that the anticipated Sets function is unlikely to see the light of day. Sets was one of the more visible changes expected in the next version of Windows (currently known as Redstone 5). It allowed …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 28th June 2018 11:06 GMT AMBxx
More tabs?
I think I've reached peak tab. I have a tab for each remote desktop connection. Within a RDP session, I may have Visual Studio running - it shows my documents as multible tabs. I can even have multiple groups of tabs. then the browser bits and tool thing are split using tabs.
When I use SAP BI, it even has multiple tabs for the simplest of tool bars.
ENOUGH!
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Thursday 28th June 2018 11:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: More tabs?
Yeah... after 8.1... and now 10... seems like MS is doing the carnaval roundabout quicker than phones!
"Smaller is better... bigger is better..." ad infinitum.
Now it's "no windows, tiles instead... no, tabs now, no windows, um tiles?"
Who has not caught on that they are just deleting and reintroducing "features" with the adage that it is "new"?
Granted there are some nice real improvements under the hood. Like compressed RAM memory access . But AFAIK the likes of MacOS (and thus hopefully Linux too) can do In-kernel memory compression also!
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Thursday 28th June 2018 11:34 GMT big_D
No news here...
At their developer conference last month, they announced that it would be unlikely to make it into Redstone 5.
So it is hardly a surprise that it is disappearing from Redstone 5 builds.
That isn't to say it is totally dead, Microsoft said they would deliver features when they are ready... That said, I saw sets on the last build and it is useless to me, I couldn't see any plausible reason to "tab" together different applications.
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Friday 29th June 2018 09:13 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: Why tabs?
Why you would want to do that is anybody's guess.
As stated in the article, the nominal reason is so that users can group together related applications, presumably to simplify task-flow.
For instance, I can see a use-case for having, for instance, Visual Studio, Fiddler, Management Studio and Notepad++ grouped together when debugging a web application with a SQL Server back-end, especially if you were to have multiple instances of each for the situation where you work on more than one thing and have to switch between those things.
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Saturday 30th June 2018 05:53 GMT big_D
Re: Why tabs?
@Loyal Commenter but that would be a case, for me, for having them in a "launch" set, but not tabbed, I'd have them open in separate windows spread across my main monitor at home (34" ultra wide) or spread over the three Full HD monitors at work, I wouldn't want them grouped in a tab, because if that is the case, I can only see one piece of information at a time, I can't compare the content of different windows or look at the contents of one windows (E.g. report) whilst working on another windows (E.g. Report Generator) to correct the output and a third window with the data sources in it.
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Thursday 28th June 2018 20:04 GMT Roland6
Re: Desktops
@Geoff - I think you are getting confused between functionality MS included in the Windows distribution and what was available from elsewhere.
Mark Russinovich released the (basic but functional) Sysinternals Desktops utility that supported 4 virtual desktops in 2008 for XP. I suggest the only reason for Mark releasing this tool was because Windows (XP and prior), didn't include virtual desktop functionality in-the-box.
Before XP, there were several third-party virtual desktop utilities, for Win3 (eg. Xerox Rooms for Win 3.x) and Win95/98 (for examples see http://cd.textfiles.com/winfiles/winfiles1/desktop-virtual/desktop-virtual.html ). Obviously, there is a selection of solid third-party desktop utilities for XP/Vista/7/8, however, it wasn't until 2015 with Win10 that MS included the capability in-the-box...
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Thursday 28th June 2018 16:23 GMT bombastic bob
MS - 'majoring' in the 'minors'
"What is it about KDE's 'Desktops' feature" "MS are finding so difficult to implement"
I really like the multi-desktop feature in open source desktops, which showed up OVER 10 YEARS AGO in various desktop managers (like KDE, gnome, vtwm, fluxbox, ...). MS had a 'hackish" multi-desktop attempt-thing for XP back then, that I tried, but it stank.
virtual desktops is the ONLY feature of Win-10-nic that I would say something nice about. That should be *THE* way to organize applications together. Just open the windows up in the same desktop. What's so hard about that?
Anyway, I'm not surprised that Micro-$#!+ is busy "majoring in the minors" again. The article mentions 'fluid design' [and when I remind myself what that means, it's exactly the WRONG DIRECTION - make applications look/*feel* the SAME on ALL platforms? Like dumbing the desktop down to be a PHONE interface, because phones will *FEEL* bad about having OTHER platforms run BETTER than them?]. The 'fluid design' concept is 'Deja Vu' of the *INSANE* design "feature" of Win-10-nic in the FIRST place, that "one application, everywhere" concept that can NOT work unless applications are "dumbed down" (in the UI, in the functionality) to work on teeny-processor teeny-screen PHONES.
It's why UWP is *JUST* *PLAIN* *FAIL* !!!
So I ask this: **WHY** can't Micro-$#!+ deliver what the CUSTOMERS want (3D skeuomorphic as an OPTION, no SLURP, no ADS, no strong-armed MS LOGIN, no FORCED UPDATES, ...) instead of *CRAMMING* what *THEY* want
up our asdown our throats?Instead, they bit-fiddle, tweak, use market-speak to re-brand what they've tried several times (and failed at) aka 'fluent design' and 'UWP', yotta yotta yotta I'm sick and FEELING tired of it.
(I wish there were a 'vomit' icon but this one will do)
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Thursday 28th June 2018 17:59 GMT Teiwaz
Re: MS - 'majoring' in the 'minors'
I really like the multi-desktop feature in open source desktops, which showed up OVER 10 YEARS AGO in various desktop managers (like KDE, gnome, vtwm, fluxbox, ...).
Over 10 years? Been twenty plus years KDE being 20, and others in the TWM lineage were there first (CTWM, with up to 32 multiple virtual screens).
Time flies and we're all getting older, but ignoring decades won't make us younger.
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Thursday 28th June 2018 17:48 GMT Teiwaz
What is it about KDE's 'Desktops' feature
KDE have moved onto 'Activities' and have been encouraging it's 'it's a replacement, but not' status for some time.
It's kind of the same as Desktops, but not. I 'm not sure most users know what to do with them (with or instead of desktops).
Doesn't Pekwm have tabbed windows? (or is it Fluxbox?) or both?.....to drunk to look it up.
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Thursday 28th June 2018 13:41 GMT Cyberneticist
Netelligence - an option for people wanting Sets!
I've been working on a project that is a bit similar to "Sets" for quite a while now! The client isn't quite ready for public viewing yet, but you can see the status of it all at http://www.netelligence.co.uk/ClientRoadmap.aspx - It's functional, and in fact I'm using a browser tab in it right now to write this comment!
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Thursday 28th June 2018 20:06 GMT elDog
How come nobody's mentioned running multiple VMs on a desktop?
I really do this for production work - VMWare Workstation and VirtualBox. On Linux and on Windows hosts. It sorta fits the workflow that this article is talking about. When you want to work on project XYZ then switch to the appropriate VM - either windowed or full-screen. Shared folders and clipboards makes this pretty seamless.
There are so many benefits to encapsulating particular environments in a "container" or VM that they don't really need listing. But they include isolation, snapshots, pausing/stopping the whole environment, granular allocation of resources, etc.